Rise of the high-tech border industry

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2022

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

AI, data analytics and automated surveillance are ever more shaping refugees' futures around the world. From the external borders of the EU to the US-Mexico border, "smart border" solutions, developed by private companies for states, are being used to surveil and control people on the move. Lawyer and anthropologist Petra Molnar tells the BBC's Frey Lindsay how she's seen these technologies creep into borders and camps around the world, and Dr Emre Eren Korkmaz of Oxford University describes how this global "border industrial complex" has become hugely profitable for private companies. We'll also hear from a new high-tech refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos, where refugees feel oppressed and dehumanised by the litany of technology that surrounds them. Sae Bosco, of Samos Volunteers, explains that these technologies don't do much to protect people within the camp, despite the EU's claims. And Sarah Chander of European Digital Rights tells Frey that the EU appear aware of the harms algorithmic surveillance and control can bring to people, and so is moving to protect EU citizens, but not migrants.

(Picture: the Samos CCAC refugee camp. Picture credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service.
0:02.7	I'm Frey Lindsay, and today we're going to be talking about the border industry.
0:11.1	The fastest sound you will hear is the microphone sound, which is a bit worrying because you will have to listen to your name all the time.
0:24.4	That's Abdullahi. He's from Somalia and he's a resident of the closed control access center.
0:29.6	A refugee camp located some seven kilometers from the port town of Vathie on the Greek island of Samos,
0:34.9	just across the Aegean Sea from Turkey.
0:37.3	Now, I know our attention is mainly on Ukrainian refugees at the moment,
0:40.8	but it shouldn't be forgotten that there are still many thousands of refugees
0:43.4	from Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
0:47.5	just to name a few, in various camps on the Greek islands,
0:50.4	and a few hundred of them are now in the new closed control access center on Samos.
0:55.1	As the name implies, the camp is a new type of refugee camp with highly sophisticated surveillance
0:59.9	and control features. It's cost the EU taxpayer over 40 million US dollars.
1:04.6	Living in that camp is really stressful because when you are coming out, the first thing
1:10.4	you will see is the many
1:12.4	security guards, police everywhere, bus through many controls and jack-pointes
1:18.1	with finger-brainties the four corners all around barbedware and many cameras
1:25.6	and also some drones at night and everywhere a police car is behind
1:33.2	the fence it's like you are guarded as a brisona the samos camp was built to replace a previous one
1:40.2	located closer to the town of vathi similar to to camps on four other Greek islands, that old
1:44.9	Samos camp was designed to hold just a fraction of the people that ended up there as a result of
1:49.0	the increase in irregular migration from Turkey that began around 2015. Those old camps, the Moria
	...

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